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Consciousness Explained

Article in Philosophical Review · July 1993

DOI: 10.2307/2185913

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International Phenomenological Society

Review: Précis of Consciousness Explained

Reviewed Work(s): Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp. 889-892
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Vol. Lm, No. 4, December 1993

Pr6cis of Consciousness Explained*

DANIEL C. DENNEIT

Tufts University

Consciousness has always been a baffling phenomenon, and some have seen it
to be fundamentally mysterious, irretrievably beyond human understanding.
I argue, on the contrary, that its mysteries are beginning to dissolve, thanks
largely to the onslaught of empirical and conceptual advances in cognitive
science. So entrenched, however, are the traditional ways of addressing the
philosophical problems, that a frontal assault on them is doomed. One can-
not hope to convince philosophers by straightforward arguments to abandon
the "obvious" assumptions whose mutual acceptance has defined the debates.
A more indirect approach is called for ("Preview," pp. 16-18), postpon-
ing a direct confrontation with the traditional categories until a new per-
spective has been created, and the reader familiarized with some of its pow-
ers. This is a three-stage operation. In Part I, a survey of phenomena and puta-
tive difficulties sets the problem and establishes a method. The goal is to
create a materialistic, scientifically supported but still deliberately sketchy,
model that can actually explain all the puzzling phenomena. The method for
achieving this goal requires a philosophically and scientifically neutral way
of describing the data-a phenomenology in its original sense of a pre-theo-
retical catalogue of phenomena. In Part II, the sketch of the model, the Mul-
tiple Drafts Model, is developed and supported, and put through some of its
paces. Finally, in Part III, the philosophical implications of the Multiple
Drafts Model are examined. Only then do I confront the challenges invoking
folk psychological categories, and such philosophical terms as qualia,
epiphenomenalism, zombie, and finctionalism, the staple diet of philosophi-
cal debate in recent years.
(This indirect approach does not work for all readers, I have learned.
Some find the temporary suspension of allegiance to traditional categories
beyond them, or are unwilling to venture it. Those who insist on trying to
impose their favorite philosophical distinctions on the book from the outset
are almost bound to find the first two parts "exasperatingly elusive, even

* Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1991), pp.
xiii, 511.

DENNEIT SYMPOSIUM 889

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self-contradictory" (Block, 1993). This can prevent such a reader from ever
entertaining seriously the possibility that the arguments in Part In succeed
in undercutting the traditional distinctions.)
In Part I, the method of heterophenomenology is presented, motivated,
and analyzed. It captures the actual practice and background assumptions of
cognitive scientists studying consciousness, providing a framework within
which theoretical disagreements regarding the explanation of the data can be
expressed, while permitting the data to be acknowledged by all sides.
In Part II, the method is put to the test by considering some initially
counterintuitive phenomena involving the timing of "events in conscious-
ness." The paradoxical flavor of these phenomena is due, I argue, to the
widespread but tacit assumption of a certain picture of how consciousness
must be related to the brain, which I call the Cartesian Theater. Contempo-
rary theorists have abandoned Descartes' notoriously problem-ridden dual-
ism, with its miraculous trans-substance interaction at the pineal gland, but
they have not discarded enough; they have clung to the Cartesian idea that
consciousness of a stimulus (or other event) happens when and only when
trains of neural events caused by the event in question get transduced into
some central medium (the Cartesian Theater). According to this doctrine,
which I call Cartesian materialism, there is a cerebral seat of consciousness
"where it all comes together." Exposing this bad idea is not very hard, and
decrying it is fun for all, but finding an alternative vision is an uphill battle
against intuitions that many persist in deeming innocent. The analysis and
criticism of these intuitions, and a re-investigation of the phenomena, yields
some constraints on models which are then elaborated into a sketch of an al-
ternative model (or family of models), the Multiple Drafts Model. The ini-
tially curious and unfamiliar features Qf the model are shown to have plau-
sible evolutionary sources, and a chapter is devoted to how the model can
deal with some of the most recalcitrant problems of language production.
What emerges from all this is a cognitive "architecture" of conscious-
ness, summarized in a Thumbnail Sketch:

There is no single, definitive "stream of consciousness," because there is no central Head-

quarters, no Cartesian Theater where "it all comes together" for the perusal of a Central
Meaner. Instead of such a single stream (however wide), there are multiple channels in which
specialist circuits try, in parallel pandemoniums, to do their various things, creating Multiple
Drafts as they go. Most of these fragmentary drafts of "narrative" play short-lived roles in the
modulation of current activity but some get promoted to further functional roles, in swift suc-
cession, by the activity of a virtual machine in the brain. The seriality of this machine (its "von
Neumannesque" character) is not a "hard-wired" design feature, but rather the upshot of a suc-
cession of coalitions of these specialists.

The basic specialists are part of our animal heritage. They were not developed to perform
peculiarly human actions, such as reading and writing, but ducking, predator-avoiding, face-rec-
ognizing, grasping, throwing, berry-picking, and other essential tasks. They are often oppor-

890 DANIELC. DENNEIT

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tunistically enlisted in new roles, for which their native talents more or less suit them. The re -
sult is not bedlam only because the trends that are imposed on all this activity are themselves
the product of design. Some of this design is innate, and is shared with other animals. But it is
augmented, and sometimes even overwhelmed in importance, by microhabits of thought that are
developed in the individual, partly idiosyncratic results of self-exploration and partly the pre -
designed gifts of culture. Thousands of memes, mostly borne by language, but also by wordless
'images" and other data-structures, take up residence in an individual brain, shaping its tenden -
cies and thereby turning it into a mind. (pp. 253-54)

This eclectic model draws heavily on the work of many researchers in

cognitive science, and the final chapter of Part II orients the model with re-
spect to that literature, acknowledging sources, adjudicating a few of the
controversies, and elaborating some of the important details in preparation
for the philosophical work of Part III.
Part III opens with a challenge regarding the phenomena of mental im-
agery, and addresses, in turn, the philosophical literature on the nature of
mental representation, belief and thought, the status of folk psychology, the
problematic (indeed incoherent) philosophical concept of zombies, the
pathologies of blindsight and unilateral neglect, and the ubiquitous and be-
guiling concept of "filling in" by the brain. The idea that there is something
like a "phenomenal field" of "phenomenal properties" in addition to the in-
formational/functional properties accommodated by my theory is shown to
be a multi-faceted illusion, an artifact of bad theorizing. Otto, a fictional in-
terlocutor, occasionally interrupts the proceedings in order to express under
cover of anonymity the most persistent philosophical objections I encoun-
tered in presentations of early drafts of these chapters. (This turns out to
have been a valuable expository tactic, I think. Otto has been denounced as a
stooge or strawman by some, but others have hailed him as my
"philosophical conscience" and exp-ressed their allegiance to his doctrines
and even endorsed his expression of them. In fact, everything Otto says was
drawn, with scant editorial amendment, from heated discussions with
philosophers with impeccable credentials.)
Chapter 12, on qualia, exemplifies the "end run" strategy of the whole
book, eschewing the direct confrontation (for which, see Dennett, 1988) for
an explanation of why the whole idea of qualia is forlorn to begin with. A
substitute is provided: an account of some relevant phenomena-color and
our attitudes towards colors-that does the work qualia-theories were sup-
posed to do without ever entangling the theorist in the definitional and
methodological problems that beset that literature.
The last two chapters defend answers to the perennial problems about
the nature of the self, the problem of other minds (especially the minds of
other animals and robots), and the hidden agenda that drives so much theo-
rizing by philosophers of mind: the dimly imagined moral implications of a
materialist theory of consciousness.

DENNE'IT SYMPOSIUM 891

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 References

Block, N., 1993, review of Consciousness Explained, Journal of Philosophy,

90,pp.181-93.
Dennett, D., 1988, "Quining Qualia," in A. Marcel and E. Bisiach, eds., Con-
sciousness in Contemporary Science, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
pp. 42-77.

892 DANIEL C. DENNEIT

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